


Calm the ocean

by kate_the_reader



Series: His sun [4]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Communication, Discovering New Things, Explicit Consent, M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), POV Crowley (Good Omens), Touch-Starved, Touching, body issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-11
Updated: 2019-11-11
Packaged: 2021-01-28 21:42:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21399106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kate_the_reader/pseuds/kate_the_reader
Summary: Aziraphale and Crowley continue their explorations of each other's bodies, looking and touching, giving and receiving. It starts with a request ...He’s holding himself stiffly, his back rigid, not the lovely curve it had in sleep. Aziraphale sets the book and the pen aside and slides over to Crowley. He reaches for him, his hand slipping up under his hair, to the back of Crowley’s neck. He can feel the tension there.“No,” he says. “I shouldn’t have asked.” He gathers Crowley to him, his back to Aziraphale’s chest. “I’m sorry, my dearest,” he says. “It was thoughtless of me. Please forgive me.”
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Series: His sun [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1480562
Comments: 26
Kudos: 171





	Calm the ocean

**Author's Note:**

  * For [PyotrIljich](https://archiveofourown.org/users/PyotrIljich/gifts).

> This story is a gift for PyotrIljich, who guessed something of what happens in it, and who I have loved discussing these stories with. The title is from a lyric by Poets of the Fall which they shared with me. Thank you!
> 
> And as always, my dear friends mycitruspocket and MsBrightsideSH have helped this be what it is. Thank you both!

Crowley sprawls amid the tumble of his elegant slate-grey bedclothes — his hair snaking across the pillow, one knee bent, long foot tucked under the other calf, one arm thrown above his head, hand softly curled.

Hs back is turned trustingly to Aziraphale, a sinuous line. In sleep, he makes no attempt to hide the scales he may be learning not to hate. 

Aziraphale settles more comfortably into the pillows he has heaped up against the headboard of elaborately carved, dark-stained oak — striking but not meant for lounging. Having seldom bothered with a bed, he is coming to appreciate this one, because it is Crowley's, and learning to like sleep, in Crowley’s arms, or wrapping Crowley in his, keeping each other safe.

But he rarely sleeps as long or as deeply as Crowley, hasn’t yet got the knack of it. He wakes before Crowley is ready to. He could get up, but what would be the point of that? Sitting stiffly in Crowley’s throne with a book, when he could be in here, comfortable and close? So he piles up pillows and rests against them, and watches over Crowley.

Watches over him and learns his body, so different from Aziraphale’s own. His black spine a line of knobs, so pleasing to run one’s fingers down. His long hands holding the memory of how they feel on Aziraphale’s skin. His mouth as soft in sleep as it is on Aziraphale’s in those moments when a kiss is a simple connection, a way of saying ‘I’m here with you’.

As much as Aziraphale would like to capture this in ink, he will not do it without Crowley’s willing participation. He took without asking so often in all their long years, but it may be freely given now, if he asks. He does wish Crowley will allow it: he wants so much to show him how beautiful he is, how the scales on his back in no way detract from that; how they are another part of what makes him uniquely his precious, beloved self. But it’s not just that Crowley is physically beautiful — everything about him is part of the beauty of his heart and his soul. If only he could show Crowley that. If only Crowley would allow himself to believe it.

So he watches and waits, and Crowley wakes soon enough, no longer needing or wanting to while away whole days in unconsciousness.

“Angel,” he says, turning his head to look over his shoulder at Aziraphale, voice sleep-slurred.

“Good morning, my love,” says Aziraphale, as Crowley stretches, a ripple from shoulders to toes. 

He rolls over to face Aziraphale. “What have you been doing?” 

“Nothing. Looking. Learning.”

Crowley reaches for Aziraphale’s hand, tugs him down next to him. "Learning?"

"Your lines, your contours."

Crowley is puzzled for a moment, then he says: "Do you want to draw me again?"

“I would like to. But not if it would make you in the least bit uncomfortable.” They are lying face to face, Aziraphale drifts his fingers up Crowley’s spine.

“You want to draw … _that?_”

Aziraphale hates the tone Crowley directs against himself.

“If you could see yourself as I see you …”

Crowley’s eyes narrow, but he agrees: “I suppose so. If you really want that.”

"Thank you, my dear."

“Now?”

“Well, I don’t have any paper here, or ink. Another time.”

“Hmmm,” says Crowley, glancing at the bedside table. There, next to the delicate white orchid he’d placed there when the table arrived, is a sketchbook, a pen and a bottle of ink. “Or now.”

“Crowley! You have to stop doing—”

“Stop? Shan’t.”

Aziraphale reaches for the book and the pen and resettles himself against the pillows, his legs stretched out. Crowley wraps a hand around an ankle, his thumb stroking lightly across the instep of Aziraphale’s foot.

“How do you want me?” he asks.

_Every way_, Aziraphale thinks, still shy to say it aloud. 

Crowley turns over, his back to Aziraphale as he was in sleep. “Like this?” he says, looking over his shoulder, his hair cascading down his back, red against black, fire and smoke. 

He is so very lovely.

But there is a look in his eyes, a pain. He’s holding himself stiffly, his back rigid, not the lovely curve it had in sleep. Aziraphale sets the book and the pen aside and slides over to Crowley. He reaches for him, his hand slipping up under his hair, to the back of Crowley’s neck. He can feel the tension there.

“No,” he says. “I shouldn’t have asked.” He gathers Crowley to him, his back to Aziraphale’s chest. “I’m sorry, my dearest,” he says. “It was thoughtless of me. Please forgive me.”

“Nonsense. I’m being … how do you put it? ‘An old silly’.”

“No, you’re not.” He strokes across Crowley’s chest, holds him close. He has his arms and legs wrapped around Crowley, and Crowley has a hand wrapped around each of his ankles. He feels faintly ridiculous, but he is trying to learn to override such feelings.

“I am being completely truthful when I say that you are wholly beautiful to me, but I must not force you to believe me.”

Crowley makes a small unhappy noise. Then he says: “May I tell you, angel, some of the things I adore? Some of the parts of your whole?" He looks over his shoulder and Aziraphale nods. He can give this, to be the focus of Crowley’s attention, instead of obliging him to accept scrutiny. 

“Alright then. Let me start here.” He holds Aziraphale’s feet in his hands, his strong thumbs pressing into the insteps. “I know you think it’s silly, but I do love your feet. I noticed them that very first day, on the stones. Maybe it’s because they were the first part of you that was once there and then hidden. The first part I had, and then lost.”

Aziraphale’s toes curl. It is very odd to be told this, but he has told Crowley he loves parts of him that Crowley has felt ashamed of, and that must be far more difficult to hear. 

Crowley bends and kisses his right ankle bone, and then the left. “Alright, angel?” he says.

“Yes.” It comes out hesitant, and then Aziraphale laughs a little. “How odd we are.”

“Very odd.” Crowley’s tone is brisk as his hands leave Aziraphale’s ankles and run up his calves. “So strong and shapely,” he says. “Stockings. What a marvellous invention _they _were.”

“I did rather like them, I must say.”

“White stockings do show off a well-turned calf.”

“Black too. Don’t think I didn’t notice, even though I was watching that poor young man struggling to say his lines in the face of indifference.”

“That 'poor young man' was the talk of the town before long, if you remember. As I was saying: stockings. I’d never seen these,” his hands squeeze, “before. Well met, indeed.” His hands linger, warm. Aziraphale loves Crowley’s hands.

Crowley gets up on his knees and turns to face Aziraphale, leans in to kiss him, and Aziraphale feels his own mouth relax, letting go of the last bit of awkwardness he has been feeling. It’s just them, together. They are safe. 

“Come back among your heap of pillows now and get comfortable. I’m not finished, you know. I’ve barely begun.”

Aziraphale moves back up the bed and leans back, and Crowley follows and straddles his thighs. He puts his hands on Aziraphale’s shoulders and runs them lightly down his chest, his stomach. “So soft,” he says. In his mind, Aziraphale hears Gabriel’s mocking voice. “Hush!” Crowley admonishes quietly, shaking his head. “So soft, so lovely. I know what They think. I saw them, remember? They’re not here, and what They think doesn’t matter. It never did.”

His hands are on Aziraphale’s stomach, he sinks his fingers gently into the flesh. Aziraphale looks into Crowley’s face, rather than down at himself.

“Let me tell you something I know and They have forgotten. This,” he sweeps his hands across Aziraphale’s skin, across his plump belly, “hides such strength. I think I’m going to have to swoon more, just to be picked up like that again.” He looks up; he’s smiling, but there is seriousness too. “Such strength and generosity, angel,” he says. “You told me touch was forbidden, how no one ever touched, Up There. I am lucky, I am _privileged_, that I can do this, finally. My old lot don’t go in for it either, believe me.”

Crowley’s tender ferocity is almost overwhelming, it is difficult to be the focus of it. Part of him is tempted to deflect it with a laugh, or light words, but just as he has told Crowley the deep truths of how he feels about him, about his body, even the parts Crowley feels less than kind towards, so he must accept Crowley’s truths. He hopes his face conveys that. “My darling,” he says, attempting to infuse his voice with everything Crowley’s attentions make him feel.

“Your touch, the way you hold me, the way I feel I can sink into your softness, angel, do you know what that’s like for me? You saw what they’re like, Down There. You understand, don’t you?”

“We were both so hungry.”

“Starved.”

Crowley comes to lie next to Aziraphale, his head pillowed on his hip. He turns his face inwards, pushes the top of Aziraphale’s underwear down a little and places his mouth on the skin there, his hair falling forward, its own feather-light touch. Aziraphale threads his fingers through it, cups his hand round the back of Crowley’s skull, and for a moment they are simply quiet together.

Then Crowley, nosing at the band of Aziraphale’s pants, murmurs: “May I?”

“Yes.” Aziraphale can't deny him. He waits to find out what Crowley wants to do. Everything is so new, there are so many ways to touch and be touched: ways he has read about, has wondered about, has imagined even if only vaguely, lacking complete information. Of course Crowley would know more. “I’m in your hands,” he says, meaning it metaphorically, and perhaps literally.

“Mmmm,” Crowley breathes, his tongue tracing a delicate trail on Aziraphale’s skin. “The way you taste, the scent of you. I’ve always known it, but to be drowned in it like this …”

Crowley’s mouth is so close to that new part of him, that part that he only somewhat understands. He wants his touch; perhaps what he wants most is to give Crowley what _he_ wants. Crowley won’t take more than he can give.

“Angel?” Crowley raises his head, “Are you alright?”

“Yes.” But that’s not completely true. “I think so.” That’s closer. He doesn’t know. “Why?” 

“I can tell. Just as you knew about me, before, I can also tell.”

“Well, it’s all so new. I’m … I’m not sure.” 

Crowley has tipped his head back, but kept a hand on Arizaphale. “What do you want?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know! What do _you_ want?”

“I want to taste you. I want to put my mouth on this part of you.”

Aziraphale can’t help his sharp intake of breath.

“Yes, there. That _is_ what I want. But that’s not what you thought we’d be doing this morning, was it?”

He is startled into a shaky laugh. “No, I suppose not.” 

Crowley’s hand is still there, low on his belly where he pushed his pants down, one finger stroking his skin gently. He puts his other hand on Aziraphale’s genitals, over the fabric of his underwear.

“It was so much, the first time. And that was your hand!”

“And you worry it will be too much?”

“Yes, I do,” Aziraphale admits. He is blushing hot, but he is aroused — and avoiding looking for evidence that Crowley is too.

Crowley lifts his hand away and slides up the bed, props himself on an elbow and leans down to kiss him. Aziraphale opens his lips, inviting him in, reaching up to pull him down closer. Crowley cups his cheek tenderly, and Aziraphale’s whole body, his whole self, strains towards him. Crowley pulls back a tiny way, as if he’s giving Aziraphale room to speak. 

“I do want … what you want. But I am …” It’s embarrassing to say this, “I am afraid.”

“Thank you, angel,” Crowley whispers. “If it is too much, tell me to stop.”

“You would do that?”

Crowley is too close to see properly, but he huffs a tiny wry breath. “Yes. Might not be _easy_,” he says, “but I would.” 

“_Crowley_.” There’s nothing else he can say, he hopes Crowley understands. He closes the space between them again, tangling his fingers in Crowley’s hair, trying to put into a kiss all he is feeling: his love and gratitude and desire and uncertainty and fear. 

Crowley strokes his other hand down Aziraphale’s chest as they kiss, lower and lower, until finally he slips down the bed again. He puts his fingers under the band of Aziraphale’s pants. “This alright?” he asks.

“Yes.” 

Crowley pulls them down, and Aziraphale lifts his hips so he can take them all the way off. Crowley reaches for his hand. “You’ll tell me, angel, won’t you, to stop—?”

“I will, if …” He trails off, not really able to voice his half-understood fear.

Crowley bows his head, his hair spilling across his shoulders and sweeping like a curtain around his face. Aziraphale pushes his free hand into the tumult of red, and Crowley moans. He is kissing Aziraphale low on his belly, right where it is softest. It’s indescribable. Crowley is still kissing his way across his skin, adding tiny licks, just the point of his tongue, still hasn’t touched him _there_. Aziraphale’s uncertainty lifts. With Crowley’s reassurance, he is eager now, he _wants_ it, gasps “Oh! Crowley!” Crowley looks up at him, his beloved golden eyes full of love and desire, asking a question. Aziraphale nods. “Yes,” he says, “Please. Please, my darling.”

Crowley smiles, so soft, and squeezes Aziraphale’s hand, bows his head again.

And touches him there, with his mouth. A delicate press of his lips.

“Oh!”

Crowley grips his hand even tighter, mooring him to this place, this bed, right here, the two of them here, together.

His mouth, so warm, so soft, is on him, there, _there! _Aziraphale floats on a wide ocean, borne up on its tide, and yet anchored. He won’t drown or be swept away by any tempest, by the storm that is building. He won’t be dashed upon the rocks, even as waves break over him. Crowley holds him, gently, securely. His other hand presses down on Aziraphale’s hip. “I am with you,” he says without words, “You are with me. You can let go, because I will hold you.”

Aziraphale surrenders to the waves and Crowley lifts him up and keeps him safe.

His throat is full of the waves’ salt water, the salt water of his own tears of ecstasy. As the waves recede, he is laid gently down, not on the sands of the shore, but in Crowley’s bed, under the sun of Crowley’s eyes. 

“Angel,” he breathes, almost reverent. “Angel.” He gathers Aziraphale in his arms.

“My love.” His voice is rough with salt, but Crowley hears him.

*

After a long while of holding Aziraphale close, as close as he has always wanted to, as he can now, almost whenever he wants, whenever he needs to — does Aziraphale understand how he _needs?_ —Aziraphale stretches in his arms and looks up at him with lazy eyes.

“You kept me safe,” he says, “It was like the sea, and you held me up. Thank you, my Crowley.”

His name in Aziraphale’s mouth is always an endearment, now, and spoken like this, his voice soaked in pleasure, it is almost more than Crowley can bear. 

“You kept me safe, when I felt I would shatter into atoms, angel.”

“We keep each other safe. I was foolish to worry, but everything is new.”

Aziraphale presses even closer in his arms. “Oh,” he says, “my dear,” and slips a hand down between them, “you are still … unsatisfied. Do you want … shall I? Only I’m not sure—” The familiar crease of worry has appeared between his eyebrows and he bites his lip, a blush sweeping over his face.

“Every touch, any touch, however you touch me … that is to say … your mouth, your hands — I want it all, wherever, whatever you want to give me.” He’s babbling, but he needs Aziraphale to understand this: there is no touch that is lesser, none that is superior, he is greedy for them all.

Aziraphale sits up, an intent look in his lovely eyes. Crowley is lying half-propped in the heap of pillows. Aziraphale starts at his shoulders, sweeps his hands down his arms, then takes his left hand in both of his, bumps his thumb across his knuckles, and turns his hand over, kisses the palm, and trails his mouth up the tender inside of his wrist and all the way to his elbow, dips his tongue into the hollow and continues up, pushing Crowley’s arm above his head and sinking his nose into his armpit.

They neither of them have any other experience of this exploration; Crowley adores it, that neither of them has done this before, has had this done to them by another. Six thousand years and everything is new, nothing is blunted by overuse, everything is sharp, and clean, and only for them. 

Aziraphale picks up his other hand and stretches it above his head as well, trailing his fingers, feather-light, from palm to wrist to elbow to armpit, studying Crowley’s face, tracking every shift moving across it.

Now Aziraphale’s mouth is on his throat, his nose is pressed up under his jaw, his fingers are pushed into his hair, his breath is warm on his skin. Crowley can’t think, strung out at the edge of too much, his unneeded breathing suspended.

Aziraphale sucks at the tender skin under the hinge of Crowley’s jaw, that soft not-quite-hidden space, his tongue slipping out to soothe the hot ache. “That scared me, before,” he says.

“Sorry,” Crowley gasps, tipping his head back to give Aziraphale better access.

“Don’t be. You’ve taught me …” He moves his mouth to a new spot, “so much …” Crowley can feel the buzz of the words inside his skin.

His arms are where Aziraphale put them, he is laid out, receiving whatever Aziraphale gives. A tremor of pure pleasure ripples through his whole body, every nerve ending trembling, and he hears his breath hitching in his chest, and feels the rawness of his throat as sound grates across it, not-words, inarticulate sounds that no creature has ever uttered. Now Aziraphale’s mouth is on his body, raining kisses on him, no inch left untouched, and his hands follow his mouth, gentle, strong, holding Crowley in place, grounding him here, _here_, and his fingers wrap around Crowley’s jutting hip bones and Crowley’s whole body is taut, arching off the bed, and stars are exploding behind his eyes and his hands are clutching at Aziraphale’s shoulders. A shout tears from him, here, or not-here, and Aziraphale is holding him, his whole body is holding Crowley, the cage of his strong limbs contains him.

The air in the room vibrates, as with a note struck on a great bell, a chord plucked on a tuned string.

How long? Time is nothing, there is only the certainty of Aziraphale, every fibre of Crowley reaching for him.

Aziraphale’s thumbs brush the salt water from Crowley’s eyes. Crowley reaches for his hand, his limbs weak, his bones soft, and brings it to his mouth. He presses his lips to the pads of Aziraphale’s fingers, to the bumps of his knuckles, and Aziraphale cups Crowley’s cheek, so tenderly. “My darling,” he says, “my love.”

Crowley can feel his face trying to form a smile, but he’s too languid, his mouth can’t hold it. “’Ziraphale,” he says, a whisper, as Aziraphale’s thumb moves over the place he marked, dragging over the ache.

Distantly, Crowley’s body remembers this languor— draped across hot stones, sun-heat turning his muscles liquid, his eyes slits, his tongue tasting the thick air. 

He is sure he can feel his scales catching on the smooth sheets. He twists, baring his back to Aziraphale, and hears a soft inhalation.

“May I?”

“Please. I want you to.”

Aziraphale’s first touch is as light as air, then his whole palm, both his hands, are pressed to that place low on Crowley’s spine, warmth soaking into him, calming the shaking that has seized him again.

“You are here, with me,” Aziraphale breathes, his mouth against Crowley’s scales. “Here.” And Crowley relaxes, fully at home in his body at last, _at last_.

A long time later, still wrapped in Aziraphale’s strong arms, Crowley tips his head back, so he can look into his eyes. 

“I’m ready,” he says, and now he means it. He is ready for Aziraphale’s loving scrutiny, at last, because everything he has done and said since Crowley revealed his whole self has been understanding and accepting, and finally Crowley can believe it, can receive what he now knows is a gift Aziraphale wants to give.

“Thank you, my darling,” says Aziraphale, his expression infinitely tender. “But I would rather hold you now than draw you.”

His hand, low on Crowley’s back, radiates the warmth of his love. 

**Author's Note:**

> If you liked this, I'd love to chat to you in the comments.


End file.
